The ultimate goal of marketing is to improve the visibility of a product or business by increasing its presence. In online marketing, the main objective of an advertiser is to get more Internet users to view the webpage containing the information about the product or services being promoted. One of the leading methods to increase online traffic to a certain webpage is search engine marketing.

Search engine marketing is an online marketing technique that involves promotion of websites or web pages by increasing their ranking or visibility in search engine results pages. The concept of concentrating on search engine came from the common knowledge that a large number of internet users go to search engine websites rather than or prior to going to other forms of websites. It is like placing billboards or posters in places where most of the potential customers go. The search engine results serve as a platform or channel toward the website or web pages.

How exactly does it work? A search engine website provides a connecting platform to databases where independent and dependent websites make searcheable articles available. The articles are like doors or openings of a conduit toward websites, since they contain hyperlinks that connect to specific web pages.

Search engine marketing should not be used interchangeably with search engine optimization (SEO), since it is often used to refer to any online marketing technique that involves search engines and increasing ranking and visibility, including SEO. Search engine marketing also encompasses contextual advertising, paid inclusion, and paid placement. The methods and metrics of optimizing websites through search engine marketing can be categorized into keyword research and analysis, website saturation and popularity, back end tools, and Whois tools.